"The Darker Regions of the Human Mind"

From "The Unkindest Cut of All,"
by John M. Foley, MD
Fact, July 1966, Ralph Ginzburg, Publisher
[Quoted with permission]

[W]hy anyone would want circumcision
made compulsory may seem puzzling.

One answer, of course, is that if
circumcision were made compulsory, the circumciser
would be protected whenever he happens to cripple or
kill the little boy he operates on--a "complication" that
is not so very uncommon. Another answer, I think,
must be sought in the darker regions of the human
mind, because circumcision is simply an unmitigated
fraud. It is nothing but wanton and unnecessary
mutilation. The annual 2 million assembly-line
circumcisions in this country are a monument to the
gullibility and stupidity of the American public.

For 60 years, a powerful and articulate
minority in our profession has tried to enforce a taboo
against any objective discussion of the merits or
demerits of circumcision ... To question its value has
become all but unthinkable. The medical literature is
virtually closed except to those who drool over the
operation's alleged advantages.

William Keith C. Morgan, M.D., ... has
written in the Journal of the American Medical
Associa-tion[:] ... "Why is the operation of
circumcision practiced? One might as well attempt to
explain the rites of voodoo!" ... Peter Van Zante,
M.D., ... writes in the Medical Tribune: "Circumcision
of a helpless child is a crime." Elsewhere he has said:
"Circumcision is cruel and mutilating and actually
should be outlawed." In 1920, a British physician
named G. S. Thompson, who had once circumcised
himself, later concluded that circumcision was nothing
more nor less than "a barbarous and unnecessary
mutilation" (British Medical Journal, 1920).

Efforts to justify circumcision have been
made since the very beginnings of history. The desire
to mutilate came first; the "reasons" came later.

This process of rationalization has culminated
in the supposed relationship between the husband's
foreskin and cancer of the genitals--one of the greatest
hoaxes in the history of medicine.

Circumcision provides a convenient and
socially acceptable outlet for the perverted component
of the circumciser's libido. I have had personal
experience with the psychopathology that underlies the
wish to circumcise. The pitiful wails of the suffering
infant are all too often the background for lewd and
obscene commentary by the obstetrician to his
audience of nurses. Several years ago I saw an infant
born with multiple deformities. He could not live more
than a few months at most, but to add to his
miseries, this unfortunate bit of humanity had to
undergo a thorough circumcision.

I have seen two medical students fight over
the privilege of doing circumcisions on the newborn,
although these same students showed neither interest
nor aptitude for opening boils or doing other surgical
tasks.

In 1951, I witnessed an autopsy on an infant
who had died from an infected circumcision--a death
rendered even more tragic because the mother had
tried to persuade the obstetrician to spare her infant
the ordeal.

Dr. Alexander Schaffer, a noted pediatrician,
tells with horror of a case in which an infant was
being delivered as a frank breech (buttocks first).
Before delivering the baby, and just as the penis came
into view, the obstetrician seized it and circumcised it.
That obstetrician, I would say, may be capable ... But
sexually I say he is a monster. And I say that
one of the reasons why circumcision is so common in
this country stems from the sadism of the crypto-pervert.

[P]sychiatrists have long been agreed that
circumcision is basically a punitive act.

[T]hey [those who want all males
circumcised] suffer from "foreskin envy." Cut off a
man's tonsils and it does not affect his feelings about
his neighbor's tonsils, but cut off his foreskin and his
neighbor's foreskin becomes an object of envy and
hatred. The circumcised have always behaved as if
their circumcision were a stigma of inferiority. Jew,
Moor, and Turk forced circumcision on servants,
slaves, and whole nations of conquered people.

Because the motivations of the foreskin-
phobes are so irrational, these people are hard to
combat. The introduction of routine circumcision as a
"medical" measure at the turn of the century aroused
vigorous opposition within the profession. Dr. Warren
Stone Bickham, an eminent surgeon, declared that
circumcision was a disgrace and a discredit to the
surgeon responsible. Nevertheless by 1920 the
opposition had dwindled, and the fanatical circumcisers
were in possession of the field. The opponents of
circumcision failed because they did not understand
the motives of the circumcisers and therefore could
not grapple with them.

Only the circumcised refer to the foreskin as a "useless appendage."

[Has anyone done a study on circumcisers? What kind of person trains
himself (or herself) and maneuvers himself (or
herself) into a position where he (or she) can get paid to cut healthy
erotogenic tissue -- living flesh -- from the
genitals of unwilling, unconsenting children and babies -- or, for that
matter, from willing, consenting adults?]